"I linked to the coalition to stop gun violence as myself a victim, December 21, 1995, Memphis, TN (Shelby County) - at which time I learned of the neurosurgery practices in Memphis from Dr. Patel (now Boston?) and his lovely spouse (from Cairo, IL) and the gunshot victims of Memphis and area. I was the third victim of violence that quarter (!) on that Smalltalk team at Fedex hub."I was only taken down by two handguns to my head, stripped of my coat, sweater, watch, cash and wallet and then, in the dark under a staircase, in a gated-community into which deputy sheriffs feared to enter alone in a vehicle, only hundreds of yards from the Germantown border - forced to beg for my life. It was a routine event for Shelby County in the no-man's land between white Germantown and dysfunctional Memphis. I was lucky. Only the younger boy wore a mask. Saying to a black, female manager at Fedex that my attackers were black teenagers resulted in my contract being terminated by Fedex. But when the V-P was pistol-whipped, Fedex moved that project out closer to Germantown. The sole black members of the Germantown Episcopal church of St George were the family members of a black female executive at Fedex: a lawyer residing in Germantown.
That is not the Memphis of the tours for BB King and Elvis Presley fans - and in fairness, Cleveland north of Case Western and Cleveland Clinic is much worse and seems much more hopeless.
This is Jory Aebly's account of his ordeal: he, too, was ordered onto his knees at gunpoint, but not under a staircase, in the dark. When the taller one put a round in the chamber when they first confronted me on the walk up to my door, I had seen a blue spark as he but a round into the chamber of his nickel-plated semi-automatic pistol. I still feel the barrel against my temple as they told me to beg for my life. They had looked in my coat pocket and found money which I had forgotten was there - and they sounded very mad that if they had not taken the coat, they would not have had that money.
It was a rare below-zero night in Memphis: when they were gone and I called for help (my keys were in that coat) neighbours called out to tell me to shutup. An immigrant from Pakistan, a doctor, came to my aid. The County Sheriff's people left me to shiver, no one offered a coat or a blanket. Later that night I followed their trail across the lawn and recovered the scarf which had fallen from my coat. This, the detective, had not bothered to do. One of them could have dropped his own wallet getting into their car, and the detective would have been none the wiser. When likely garage door muggers were arrested, no detective called me to try to identify the one without the mask, no one had me look at mugshots. Welcome to Memphis. You are in Shelby County, the land of John Grisham and the Hollywood movies and desperate poverty, just mile north of northern Mississippi and its endemic poverty. Police corruption. Mayoral corruption. Enduring racism. Senator Ford. The part of the country where few walk and no one walks or jogs at night. Where police ask you what you are doing in a neighbourhood based on the colour of your skin ( I did not believe this until I took a wrong turn leaning downtown after the last concert ever at Frank Hall - the officer told me to lock my doors and only to stop at red lights as if at a stop sign until back on Poplar. It had taken only one wrong turn, just as Charles and I would later make one wrong turn leaving a Chinese seafood restaurant near downtown Cleveland.
And for the morbidly curious, not, I did not have to change my underwear. I slept on the doctor's couch. I changed apartments the next day. And the next time I called about prowlers, the deputy waited for backup before driving onto the grounds of our fenced community. Once I did see community action in that modern Memphis townhome community: a lady had seen a snake and the deputy was out in the dark with his gun drawn, other men emerged with baseball bats, others with golf clubs. She was not told to shut up because people were trying to sleep. People fear snakes. Violence - that they are in denial about.
Crime in Cleveland, OH: Plain Dealer
Crime in Memphis, TN: memphiscrime
Has Memphis changed? ScoreCard
Minneapolis crime: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/crime-statistics/codefor/
I now live in a very safe Canadian city, Fredericton, NB, where people of both sexes walk and jog at night. It is not problem-free, but it is relatively free of handguns. Organized crime may be involved in their typical industries on the models of Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo and Boston, but are not obvious, that is, not visible in their favoured hang-outs. Notable in Memphis: residential arson by those with insurance policies which had a temporary housing clause, but not utterly unlike restaurant arson elsewhere in Canada. The most visible criminals are meth vendors at King's Place and its bus stop; electronic locks can be seen on some refurbished homes near the downtown. The local hazard is falling ice from eaves, not muggings (except late Saturday night after bars close.)
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